Blue
by ncfan
Summary: "The house was too empty." There were some aspects of Nini's story that Kya didn't share with her daughter.


I own nothing.

* * *

The storm had come suddenly, with nothing that could be called proper warning. A team of powerful waterbenders working in concert could have lessened the effects of the storm, or at least erected proper shelters when the ominous snow-laden winds began blowing, but there were no waterbenders in the Southern Water Tribe. Hama had been the last, and the Fire Nation took her seven years ago.

The storm came suddenly, but did not leave suddenly as would have been welcome. Instead it stayed for weeks, turning the sky a constant murky gray-white, making Kya long for the stars when she would poke her head outside the hide flap. Apart from those moments, she spent the entire time inside, and those moments did not last long—Kanna always called for her to come inside and pin down the flap so that they could keep warm as much as possible.

Kya had lived with Kanna, Chief Hanek, and their son Hakoda ever since her mother was taken away years ago (Her father had been taken away so long ago that she could not even remember his face, though she was told that she resembled him greatly). Kya's mother had been a friend of Kanna's, though she certainly didn't remember them ever her mother ever having a great deal to do with Kanna. In the absence of any other family to care for the child, Kanna had taken her in.

None of her adoptive family had ever been anything but kind to her, but it was at times like this that Kya wished she could play with Nini and Bato more often. Hakoda was a sweet kid, but a four year age difference was a large gulf when the difference meant that Kya was twelve and Hakoda was eight. Nini, aged ten, and Bato, aged eleven, bridged the gap and allowed the four of them to play together without the age gap making things awkward. Bato's father had been unwilling to risk going out in the storm but twice to visit his brother's family, and Nini? Kya hadn't seen Nini at all since before the storm came up.

Kya spent the seemingly endless track of day-nights sitting in the house, helping Kanna with the washing and the cooking. When she lied beneath her blankets on the edge of sleep, the howling of the wind sounded more like a human's wailing.

Her dreams were haunted by ice and shadows of things that couldn't be seen for the snow.

-0-0-0-

Kya hadn't seen Nini or her parents since before the storm started.

If it was just Kya and everyone she lived with who'd not seen the family, that wouldn't have been unusual. Nini's family lived on the outskirts of the village. Kya didn't know too many people who would have risked trying to get all the way across the village during such a fierce blizzard, and Nini's parents certainly weren't the daring sort. Neither was Nini, for that matter.

It wasn't just Kya who hadn't seen her friend or her parents. When the storm began to clear, enough so that the village could gather so that they could make sure that everyone was safe and no one was in need of supplies or shelter, Nini and her family did not appear. No one had seen them, not even Nini's closest neighbors. No one knew where they were.

Hanek, Kanna, some of Nini's mother's friends and a few of the men went to Nini's house, Kya, Hakoda and Bato following close behind. Kya swallowed hard when she saw her friend's house. It was nearly completely buried by snow. Everyone had been having trouble with snow falling on their houses and threatening to block off the entrances; someone's roof had caved in during the worst of the storm, and the unfortunate residents were forced to take shelter with a neighbor. But everyone else had at least _tried_ to keep their homes from being buried under snowdrifts; Hanek must have gone out half a dozen times to brush snow from the roof and the door of his home.

Despite this, the house did not at first appear to be empty. A neat path had been shoveled to clear the snow away from the door. There was smoke rising up from the chimney. Kya smiled in relief when she saw the thin black trail of smoke through the falling snow flurries. At least they'd been able to keep a fire going. Nini's parents must not have realized that the storm was beginning to die down.

But the house was empty.

"We're going to go out and search the wastes," Kya heard Hanek telling Kanna in an undertone. "They might have tried to make it to someone else's house and got turned around. It's so easy to lose your way in a storm like this."

"Then we'll go back to the village center and tell everyone to be on the look-out."

"I want to stay here," Kya heard herself say.

Hanek and Kanna looked at her in surprise, and Kya bit her lip, shivering against the biting cold that existed despite the fire burning in the fireplace. "What if Nini and her parents come back here?" she pointed out, shifting her weight nervously. There was something about the house, she couldn't tell what… "Someone needs to let them know you're out looking for them."

Kanna and Hanek exchanged a long look, before the latter nodded. Kanna frowned deeply, but didn't argue with her husband. "Alright, then." She got down on her knees in front of Kya and put her hands on the girl's shoulders. "Listen, Kya; this is important." The worry lines on Kanna's forehead and around her mouth, which had grown from something Kya saw occasionally as a little girl to something that never left the older woman now, appeared especially deeply graven. There was something troubled lurking in the back of Kanna's eyes. "You are not to leave this house until I or one of the men comes to get you," Kanna told her firmly, still frowning. "And you are _not_ to leave the house unless it is me or one of the men who came with us who's come to take you home. No one else. Do you understand?"

"…What do you mean by that…"

"Do you understand, Kya?"

Why was everyone looking at her that way? Not just Kanna, but Hanek and Bato's father and some of the men (those who could fit inside the small house) too. They were staring at Kya with such uneasy eyes. She shrank a little, and nodded. "I understand, Kanna."

"I want to stay too!" Hakoda piped up.

"Yeah, me too!" Bato added.

Kanna glared sternly at them. "The two of you will be returning to your homes with me."

Hakoda stared up at her with wide, hopeful eyes. "But—"

"Go with your mother, Hakoda," Hanek called as he left the house.

"And you go with your aunt, Bato!" Bato's father said, cutting off any protests his son might care to make.

Kya saw them off, the men heading out into the wilderness while Kanna led the women and Hakoda and Bato back towards the village center. Hakoda cast a backwards glance at her and waved. Kya waved back, suddenly wishing she didn't have to wait here alone. But there was no helping it, was there? She went back inside of Nini's house.

Alone again, Kya sighed, staring around the house. The snow nearly completely covering the house muffled the howling of the wind, but that only made it sound more eerie, when it was a distant wail rather than a nearby scream. The house felt so empty without Nini and her family in it. No Nini, her eyes lighting up to see her friend standing at the doorway looking to play with her. None of the delicious smell of Nini's mother cooking, or the scraping sound of her father tanning the hide of a prey animal he'd caught during a hunting trip. It felt so empty…

It didn't just feel empty. Kya stared around the house, wide-eyed. The house _was_ too empty.

Apart from the logs currently burning in the fireplace, there was no kindling anywhere in the house. The bedrolls were all missing, and there were no pelts on the floor or hanging up on the walls like Kya remembered. The club and knife belonging to Nini's father were both gone. There was no food anywhere in the house.

_Where did it all go? _Kya rubbed her shoulders, shivering in the cold even through her parka and gloves, even though the flap over the doorway had been pinned down and the wind was nothing but something that whispered through the snow and the roof. _And why is it so cold? Shouldn't the fire—_

"It's so cold."

Kya's breath caught in her throat. She whirled around, and saw someone small crouched by the fireplace, holding her tiny hands close to the flames.

"Nini?!"

She didn't seem to hear her. Nini sat with her back turned to Kya, shuddering as though she'd slipped and fallen into the frigid arctic waters. Kya caught sight of Nini's hands, and only felt her fear and worry deepen. Nini's hands and wrists were blue, except for her fingers, which were black as pitch. "It's so cold," the girl whimpered in a whispery, barely audible voice. "I'm so hungry and it's so cold. I can't get warm. I can't…"

"Nini?" Kya stepped forwards tentatively, stretching her hand out towards Nini and flinching. The closer she got to Nini, the colder the air became, all the warmth sucked out of the air; the fire was beginning to dim. "Nini, you need a healer; I'm going to get—"

Nini turned to look up at her. Kya shrieked and stumbled backwards. Nini's entire face, now only dimly lit by the fire, was a cold, cadaverous blue. All except for her lips and her nose, which were as black as her fingers, and her eyes, which glowed with a strange light. "You can't stay here," Nini whispered, and the fire went out, dousing the house in darkness.

Kya ran out of the house, screaming for help, but by the time someone heard her and came, they found the house dark and empty.

-0-0-0-

No one knew how to explain what Kya had seen. She wasn't the sort to make things like this up, and she wasn't the sort to start seeing things when she was nervous and alone with the howling wind. If she had seen Nini, there were few who doubted that she had indeed seen her friend. But there was only one way in and out of the house. Surely Kya would have noticed when Nini entered the house, and later when she left it. So how had she snuck up on her friend so easily? And how had she left without Kya noticing?

Chief Hanek and the men who went out searching eventually found some scraps of clothing, and the club belonging to Nini's father. They also found a few bones, blackened and burned. Inspection of the house offered up a piece of a jawbone with a few teeth still clinging to it, sitting amongst the ashes in the fireplace. The jawbone was small enough to belong to Nini, and plenty of the bones the men found out in the wilderness looked like they could have belonged to her mother, but the funny thing is, they never found enough bones for three people.

A few weeks later, someone spotted a thin plume of black smoke rising from the chimney of the now-abandoned house. Kya tried to run over to the house, but Kanna stopped her, and no one else seemed particularly eager to find out what the source of the fire was either.

No one approached the house until the next morning, when the column of smoke was gone. As before, the house was empty, but this time, there were footprints. They weren't normal footprints, though. Kya wasn't allowed to see them, but she heard enough from some of the warriors to know that though they'd clearly been made by something that walked on two feet, they weren't human footprints. There was something strange about them.

From time to time, a plume of black smoke would be seen rising from the chimney. No one went near the house.


End file.
